It Happens at the Laundromat
by PuffleHuff
Summary: My first posting! When Billy finally recovers the courage to return to the Laundromat where he fell in love with Penny, he is surprised - perhaps pleasantly - to meet a Doctor he has never encountered before... INDEFINITE HIATUS
1. Chapter 1: Returning

It had taken him about a month to regain feeling. Soon, he was inundated with feeling and emotion and confusion. The E.L.E. had offered what guidance they could, but it was clear that they were beginning to doubt the choice to accept Dr. Horrible into the League...

Billy was finally returning to the laundromat. The same laundromat where he first saw Penny. The laundromat where he fell in love with Penny. The laundromat where he watched his arch-nemesis steal Penny away from him.

And now, four months after Penny's death, and a number of expensive dry-cleaning bills later, Billy was returning to the laundromat around the corner from the Chinese grocery down the street from the newsstand where the papers had finally given up on the "Defeat of a Hero, Rise of a Villain" type headlines.

Billy stepped through the door and heard the distantly familiar chime of the bell, notifying the currently unconscious attendant of his arrival. The scent of fabric softener in the air put a series of knots into his stomach. His eyes inadvertently swept over to the corner tumble drier where he may or may not have drawn a heart around a copper penny he'd trapped there with gum. His knees weren't exactly willing to hold him up when his eyes caught the memory of his small foray into graffiti. He braced himself against a top-loader washing machine to gather his composure. He did not, however, notice the gaze of the blonde woman across the room from him.

_Think... evil. Think... composure. Be cool. Be calm. Be evil... quietly._ He gave himself an internal pep talk before turning to the task at hand: laundry. _Right, laundry. No problem._

Calm and composure-regained, Billy proceeded sorting his evil whites from his evil darks and colors. _Evil, evil, evil..._ He chanted in his head. He mused over the ease with which any old object suddenly became sinister with the simple prefix of "evil." A side-effect of membership in the Evil League of Evil. Soon, Penny was out of mind, and his laundry was getting done.

Someone in the laundromat was humming a hauntingly familiar tune. In his mind, Billy sang to himself of a shiny new Austalia. And then, out of the black pit of his mind, Penny was there, swimming through his consciousness.

His hands faltered and a stray sock fell to the floor as he pulled a clean load from his claimed machine. He bent to snatch the wayward article up and presently cracked heads with an unseen interloper.

"Ouch..." the blurry person mumbled. "Sorry, I... Saw it fall, and... Was trying to catch... Ugh..."

A dull pain was quickly dissipating from Billy's skull. His fingers closed around the troublesome sock and his free hand grasped a washing machine to pull him up. With out thinking of the shear decency of the gesture, he offered a hand to the blonde girl who sat sprawled on the floor beside him. She was palming her forehead, but somehow managed to catch hold of Billy's arm and scramble to her feet.

"I am _so_ sorry," she repeated. She brushed some lint off her butt and looked up into Billy's face. A lilac-colored bruise was beginning to sneak out from under her hairline.

"No, no," he began. "I mean, generally my laundering skills _are _flawless. Haven't lost a sock in seven years. But today..." He grinned what he hoped was a cold and disheartening grin. "My mind is in another place."

The girl in front of him did not appear chilled, nor disheartened. In fact, the small smile with which she countered his gesture was - though subtly - far more chilling than he had anticipated. Billy took one step back and reassessed the startling woman before him.

Her eyes were a cold grey-blue. Her hair a flaxen blonde not unlike his own. She wore a navy blue hoodie over a goldenrod dress which hung just past her knees. Her slender legs were also clad in navy between her hemline and the tops of a pair of deep red rain boots. _What the...? Rubber boots?_ Her complexion was too pale for this part of the country, and her looks quite eerily reflected the person currently residing in Billy's mirror. The one who appeared after weeks of careful plotting and scheming had distracted him from things like food and know, if he were a chick, anyway.

"Well... I still apologize," she responded. "I ought to know well enough by now to let sleeping socks lie." She giggled at her own ridiculous pun. And in that lilting giggle, Billy's evil-trained ears detected the slightest traces of malice and discontent. His developed momentary goosebumps, and he had to look away from her alabaster and lilac face. _Perhaps I need to take a breather from all this projection of evil I've been doing. I'm turning innocent victims into villains. _

He glanced back. Blonde. Normal. Although still pale. _I need to get out of the lair more often_ he decided, returning his full attention to the girl and holding out his hand.

"I haven't seen you here before," he stated the obvious. "Billy."

She extended her hand towards his own "Doctor vish-" a look of horror flashed across her face for the smallest of nanoseconds that Billy hardly registered it. "Vuh, vih- Vicki!" she stammered to a save.

"Dr. Vicki? Is that the official title?"

"Vicki. Just Vicki is fine." Her lighter-shade-of-pale cheeks were now attractively flushed within an inch of her red rubber boots. She grinned a genuinely warm smile and giggled a friendly and embarrassed giggle. "I work with children, and a Doctor first name is a smaller mouthful for the young ones." She grasped his outstretched hand and her fingers were warm like clean sheets straight out of the drier. "I'm Vicki."


	2. Chapter 2: Primaries

Billy was feeling... good? Was that possible? Was that allowed? _Shouldn't I feel evil at all times? _he wondered. _No, I guess not. Good is fine. As long as it doesn't go too far..._

Vicki was nice. She was awkward and somewhat bumbling, yet somehow graceful. She made awful puns and told worse jokes, but she made them with such innocent enthusiasm that it was hard to be annoyed by them.

She was also desperately helpful. That could be _slightly_ annoying. That first evening at the laundromat, Billy kept finding himself somehow entangled in her red boots, or uncomfortably close to her gold hair as she attempted to assist in the retrieval of Billy's laundry and he tried to stay out of her way.

She had left before he had. He was glad that he wouldn't have to explain the load of lab coats still in the drier. The unsettling sensations of perceived malice had not re-immerged during their brief conversation. When Vicki again shook Billy's hand, however, he thought he caught just a glimmer of spite in those grey-blue eyes.

_Dude, you're paranoid _he thought. _You've got to get out of the lair!_

The next time Billy encountered the effervescent Dr. Vicki was exactly a week following their introduction. With courage reserved from his previous trip to the laundromat, and pride in the headway he'd been making in his latest plot Billy returned to the scene of the sock incident. He had also decided that it was a better idea to do laundry in the evenings, as the laundromat patrons were more irritable, and less likely to glance sideways at him over their romance novels, or attempt to engage him in conversation about house cats.

The good doctor arrived upon the scene in a flustered flurry of laundry bags and detergent bottles. She plopped her things down upon the nearest counter and began wrangling her many primary colored articles into piles. She had four piles segregated before she seemed to realize that there was no way she'd find four unused machines all at once. And this appeared to anger her.

"Bad day, Dr. Vicki?" Billy called out over the top of his washing machine.

"What?" Her blonde head snapped up and glared across the room to the source of the remark. "Don't call!- Wait... Ugh!" She tossed her blonde hair away from her face and clenched her fists in frustration, shaking them slightly at the world at large. She paused, then, and her hands dropped to her sides.

"I'm sorry," she said, "what did you say?"

Billy tentatively approached her counter. "Bad day?" he repeated.

She sighed and looked at him with searching eyes. "You might say that, yes... Billy, right?"

"Yeah," he replied. She was still looking at him, searching for something. He felt a bit like food under that gaze. "You like the primaries, I see." he said, changing the subject and simultaneously noting the three colored stacks of clothes. Comprised entirely of various hues of red, yellow, and blue. Blue was the largest pile. The evil genius in him did a quick inventory of socks. She had enough for seven pairs, but they'd be mismatched.

"Occupational hazard," Vicki said.

"Pediatrics?"

"Huh?... Oh! Kids. Yeah..." Her gaze had finally drifted away from him. She remained distracted for a while, staring at her laundry and lost in thought.

"Oookay..." Billy said and thought simultaneously, more to himself than anyone else. He was about to return to his own laundry when she mumbled

"Small ones like bright colors..." Or so it sounded. She seemed to come around after that, and Billy returned his attention to her.

"Had to tell one of my kid's about cancer today," she stated, a sad half-smile on her face, that searching look returned to her widened eyes.

"My god," Billy sputtered. _No wonder she's a mess._ "You have kids?" he asked.

"No, no. A patient... Generally the oncologist would do it. Tell the parents. Help explain to the kid. Today it was my job."

"That's... horrible. Is the kid gonna be okay?"

"Maybe. If he survives the intensive treatments..."

Billy had been unwittingly drawing closer as Vicki had spoken. Suddenly, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Uh..." he stammered, "Doc?... Vicki?"

She had him trapped in an increasingly awkward hug. He managed to free himself enough to get a look at the side of her face, smushed into his shoulder. Silent tears were sliding down her cheeks, and he soon felt the dampness against his shirt.

"It's so... evil," she whispered against him. He could hear the sadness and anger in her voice. "To take away a child's joy. To take away any sort of excitement and anticipation. That's just wrong..."

Realizing that he was not likely to free himself of the situation without a great deal of embarrassment on both their parts, Billy listened to Vicki's words and heard the sorrow inside them.

"We're ruining this planet for our children. And all I want is to give help - and hope! - to these kids. I keep thinking, 'Maybe, someday, one of these kids will change the world, and I'll have helped them get there.' But then I go and take that dream away from them?..."

_I wanna change the world,_ Billy thought to himself. _I wanna make a better world._ He gently wrapped his arms around Vicki's waste, and quietly comforted her. "The world is a mess... And... sometimes there's nothing we can do to stop it." He sighed and breathed in the recently-washed scent of her hair. "I mean, sure... We can strive for greatness, but sometimes it's just not meant to be, and sometimes the good guy gets all the credit when it's you who held the remote, and you're just shit outta luck... And you're left balancing on eggshells..." _What am I saying?_

"Huh?" Vicki questioned his shoulder. She released her hold on his neck and leaned back to look Billy in the face. Her tears had stopped and her eyes returned to their proper proportions. "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing, nothing..." he dropped his hands from her waste, cleared his throat, and stepped back. "I'm sorry about the kid, is all."

"Me too, Billy," she sighed once more, her gaze returning to her assortment of bright clothing. "I-I... just don't think I'm up for laundry, tonight." She began to shovel her belongings back into their bags, then grabbed them up and turned towards the door.

"Here, let me... *urgh* take that," he wrestled a laundry bag from her arms and followed her out the door. She dropped her bag into the sidecar of an old motorcycle, and Billy followed suit. "Wow," he grunted, setting his bag beside the first, "Heavier than I expected."

"Sorry..." Vicki smiled sheepishly up at him, the sadness momentarily gone from her eyes. Replaced by something Billy couldn't place. And then she was flinging her arms around him again. She stood on tip-toe, one hand cradling the back of his neck while the other squeezed his side."Thanks! Thanks a lot!" she spoke with sincerity into the side of his neck. She was a lot stronger than her skinny frame portrayed.

"No - problem," he gasped before she released him, taking a lock of his hair with her in the clasp of her bracelet. He winced.

"Oh! Sorry!" Vicki exclaimed. Her pale cheeks flushed attractively, and Billy recalled their first encounter. "Gosh, I'm such a dweeb. Hardly know you and throwing myself around. And beating you up." She reached up to rub the spot where her jewelry had attacked Billy's neck.

"That's really okay," he cringed ever so slightly, and her blush deepened. She snapped her hand away and turned her attention to her motorcycle. She threw a leg over the seat and brought the deathtrap to a rattling roar. "Someday, Billy, I'll make it up to you..." Eyes twinkling fitfully...

There it was again! Was that a note of sarcasm he had just detected in Vicki's voice? But she was already speeding out of the parking lot, leaving Billy to chastise himself. _You're hallucinating... Get a grip._


	3. Chapter 3: Vicious Adjectives

Vicki was adorable. That's how she lured them in. She was young and pleasant, and impressively accomplished for someone of her age. She was the perfect siren with which to disguise the true scheme of Dr. Vicious. Leading unsuspecting victims to their unfortunate ends.

Vicious. Such a hostile adjective. Evoking images of feral dogs and hardened criminals. Vicki was far from vicious.

She was good with children. Talented. Warm and inviting. All the things Dr. Vicious was not. Well, aside from talented...

The Doctor cringed to think how she could possibly have gotten herself so enmeshed in the warm fuzzy life of Vicki Gustafson. But it was working. This parasitic relationship was exactly what the doctor ordered.

_Bwahahaha! _Vicious laughed like a maniac at her own awful pun.

_And I'll definitely be making this all up to you, Billy-buddy,_ she thought as she flashed an evil grin to herself in the rear view of the roaring motorcycle.


End file.
